The Color Revolution and Camouflage

Reviewed by Roy R. BehrensTHE PHRASE in this book’s title initially appeared in print in a 1929 issue of Fortune
magazine, a few months after the huge financial crash that launched the
Great Depression. It announced that there was an ongoing “color
revolution,” a widespread adoption of color in industrial products,
resulting in “apricot autos, blue beds, and mauve mops.”

Ironically, this book also documents that, in another sense, this
was not so much a “revolution” as an “evolution,” the stirrings of which
can be traced to the early nineteenth century. It was massively
encouraged by the Industrial Revolution, in the interior uses of color
at the Crystal Palace Exhibition (the first World’s Fair in 1851), the
invention of synthetic dyes, and chromolithographic prints and
packaging.

It was also about “evolution” because in part it was empowered by
the theories of Charles Darwin, whose much-debated writings about
natural selection prompted an increase of interest in the survival function of colors and patterns in natural forms. Was conspicuous
coloration a means by which to find a mate? At the same time, did
subdued coloration contribute to concealment? One consequence of this
exchange was the rise of modern theories about ”protective coloration”
in nature, which in World War I acquired the name of “camouflage.” In
turn, this led to chatter about “warning coloration,” such as zoologist
Hugh B. Cott’s remark that the traffic commission “has adopted a system
of coloration whose copyright belongs by priority to wasps and
salamanders.”

A recurring theme throughout this book—which the author plays up
from beginning to end—is that modern applications of color have
developed hand in hand with advances in camouflage. Indeed, it is even
contended that, at the end of WWI, it was former camouflage experts
(both army and navy) who “applied their knowledge of visual deception to
product design and created a new profession: the corporate colorist.”
If a person has the wherewithal to conceal an object, he or she can also
make that same object conspicuous, through reverse engineering. As this
book points out repeatedly, the uses of color in product design were
based on the inversion of camouflage techniques—in the words of American
artist (and WWI camoufleur) H. Ledyard Towle, it was “reverse
camouflage.”More>>>